24 Learning

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

2007 here we come

I know it is nearly Christmas and schools are thinking about the holidays but I met next year's class today and I have to say I am really excited. What a great looking bunch of people. My brain is buzzing with all sorts of ideas about ways to generate 'real' learning experiences and projects that will capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the pupils.

I wish you all a very happy and restful holiday and look forward to blogging and learning in 2007.

The link above is to the Quintura search engine for kids. Well worth looking at. It would be worth doing a comparison with google and some of the other search engines for kids like kids yahoo and ask for kids

Sunday, December 17, 2006

A Comment! Wahoo!

I've just realised how powerful and motivating it is to get a comment on my blog. I've had the map on the blog for awhile and that is quite fun to see the red dots appearing but to have a real live comment! I know this sounds silly but it is quite motivating to have some feedback. I write the blog for myself really as a way of recording sites I have found that I want to be reminded about. I have never been a diary writer but thought I'd give blogging a go. The fact that others are looking really is motivating and it is this motivation I'd love to try and capture and pass on through the creation of a blog with my class next year.

The last three years I have had the real priveledge to be a full time ICT professional development facilitator. In 2007 I am going back to a classroom teaching role at Freeville School.

I was thinking about this the other day and realised that I have learnt so much myself in the last three years. Things like blogs, podcasts and wikis are all new technologies that I have discovered and had the chance to pass on to others. It is so exciting to me to see classes get excited by the opportunities to commnicate to a global audience.

Monday, December 11, 2006

PBL

David Warlick hits the nail for me again with two recent posts on his blog. The first one is about PBL or Passion Based Learning. What he says makes so much sense to me. Find someting you are passionate about and teach using that medium. If you are into science teach science passionately. If dance is your thing be the very best dance teacher you can be and you will take your students with you. The other side to PBL is to allow children to follow their passions. How much time in the school day do children spend either waiting on others or doing stuff they find boring. Finding ways to engage students by allowing them some choice and some freedom to follow their interests is becoming so much more important.

PikiPimp

This is a cool looking website that allows you to add things to your pictures and then save the results. You can either copy the html and dump it onto your website or you can save the image for using elsewhere. Fun!